Eight months ago a hardly read any blogs. Then completely by accident (I was looking for socks) I discovered Naturally Dapper and I was hooked. I found more blogs, weird blogs, arty blogs just well-put-together blogs.
So I thought, maybe I could write one; but what the hell would I write about? I read more blogs and realised it didn't really matter as it would probably just evolve into what I wanted it to be anyway.
I came up with some really cool names but then found that they'd all been taken. One night I was watching Sixteen Candles and the Geek (Anthony Michael Hall) quotes one of the best lines in the film, "Relax, would you? We have seventy dollars and a pair of girls underpants. We're safe as kittens". Name sorted - thank you.
One month later and I have readers from Canada (Hi Beatrice - my first follower - Yay!), UK, USA, Germany, Venezuela, Poland and Hong Kong.
My post on Asumiko Nakamura ranked third out of 90,000 on Google - I was gob-smacked.
Thank you all for reading and commenting - please email me if you have any questions at:
A while ago I found this article about Matt Molloy's time stacks. He takes time-lapse images and merges them in Photoshop to produce stunning images like this one:
I thought I'd have a go so I headed for the hills and set up the camera on the tripod and took one picture every minute. The one thing you MUST do if you try this is to load in a new set of batteries before you start as your camera is going to be on for quite a while. I had planned to run the sequence for an hour (60 pics) but the batteries failed after 40 minutes. If I'd taken the camera off of the tripod to replace the batteries I would not have been able to perfectly align the camera again, but 40 pics were enough for a test run.
Once I got home I fired up Photoshop and used the following process:
Once I got home I fired up Photoshop and used the following process:
1. Drag all the images into Photoshop in the correct order. Press Enter after each image is dragged in to Place it. 2. Right-click the bottom layer (the background layer) and select Layer from background then click OK. 3. Go back to the top layer and set the layer blending mode to Lighten and set the opacity to 70%. 4. Right-click the top layer and select Copy layer style. 5. Select the next layer down, hold down shift then select the bottom layer to select all the other layers. 6. With all the other layers still selected, right-click and select Paste Layer Style. 7. Save the file as a .PSD (this will take a while and will produce a huge file). 8. When the .PSD has saved save it again but as a .JPG. 9. You now have an image that you can tweek.
I adjusted the levels and contrast and used a gradient mask to balance the levels across the image.
Here's my effort:
Clearly not as spectacular as Matt's. However, this was good practice as I realised that there's more to it than taken a load of pictures and dropping them into Photoshop. The clouds in my set were moving from left to right and the images were taken in bright daylight. Matt creates his images with the clouds coming towards him to produce a dramatic perspective. Also, most of his images are of sunsets which gives a dramatic contrast of light and dark. And there is the fact that Matt uses up to 1000 images where as I used just 40.
Since I created my image I've found a YouTube tutorial produced by Matt:
He uses a slightly different technique to mine but it's essentially the same.
You can see more of Matt Molloys time stacks on his Flickr:
If you don't have Photoshop and can't afford to 'rent' it from Adobe's cloud (you can't buy a version which you install on your PC/Mac anymore - you have to run it from the Adobe cloud), Adobe are currently offering a free download of Photoshop CS2 and loads of other previous versions of their software from:
Recently I've been on a few of trips in deepest, darkest Somerset.
A couple of weeks ago I was on the Somerset Levels, the first time I'd visited since the horrendous flooding. It was good to see (at least in the part that I visited) that the area is nearly back to normal.
There were plenty of damselflies around but I didn't spot any dragonflies. I'm no damselfly expert and identifying them can be a bit of a minefield as there is a certain amount of variability in the markings of the blue species but I think the following show either Azure damselflies (Coenagrion puella) or Variable Damselflies (Coenagrion pulchellum) and a Large red damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula):
My next trip was to a secret location 'somewhere in Somerset'. I'd heard of an unspoiled meadow that was supposedly full of orchids and after some investigation found someone who knew where it was and was willing to tell me. So many sites are damaged that I won't reveal the location but here's what I found:
Green winged orchids (Orchis morio)
Green winged orchid (pink variety)
Water forget-me-not (Myosotis scorpioides)
Red clover (Trifolium pratense)
Greater spearwort (Ranunculus lingua)
Common fumitory (Fumaria officinalis)
More Green winged orchids
My last trip was to Broomfield Hill near Bridgwater to see this year's spectacular display of bluebells:
English or Common bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)
&
Red campion (Silene dioica)
If I've mis-identified anything here please comment and I'll amend the page.
Last week a large envelope arrived from Japan - my Gothic Lolita Bible No 50 had finally arrived!
I knew it was going to take a while but when it was late I thought it had vanished into the Great Asian Parcel Eater where things disappear on their way from the far east to the UK. For the uninitiated, the Gothic Lolita Bible is a Japanese mook all about Japanese Lolita fashion. For everything you'll ever need to know about Lolita visit:
I've always been interested about fashion and when I discovered Japanese fashion a few years ago I was amazed that I'd never seen it before and also how it constantly evolves. My favourite has to be Gothic Lolita as I'm into all things gothic and fantastical (I am, however, not a Goth).
What I didn't expect to find in the parcel was this fabulous Asumiko Nakamura diary:
Asumiko Nakamura is a manga artist who specialises in Yaoi or boys' love manga. I've never read any Yaoi (definitely not my thing) but I've seen her artwork and it's lush:
(All above courtesy of asumiko.tumblr)
Some of her work reminds me of Aubrey Beardsley's work:
